Hey, it's another UFO best-of album. Of course, the previous best-of albums have collected songs from their multitude of prior albums earlier in their career; this one focuses on songs starting when Michael Schenker returned to the group around 2000. Some of the songs feature him, and some of the songs feature well-known shredder Vinnie Moore.

One of the things that's interesting to me about this is actually the difference between the tracks with the two different guitarists, because I feel like you can definitely tell a difference between them. In terms of solo acts or other bands, this is of course reasonable, but it's a little surprising to have such a noticeable stylistic difference when joining a band that's been around for 40 years.

Guitarists aside, how is the album? Being a greatest hits disc, this is likely to primarily be of interest to somebody looking for a good entry point to recent UFO. To be fair, there are a couple older songs, such as a live version of "Let It Roll" from 1975, but that was also on 2000's Covenant (and as far as I know, it's the same version). It looks like there are a couple of other live versions of songs that were on recent reissues of earlier albums. So it's not even necessarily an entry point for "recent UFO" so much as it is "recently-released albums, regardless of how recently they were recorded."

It is at this point that I have to admit a lack of familiarity with UFO, which is a little sad relative to their forty-year history and wide influence on bands since the '70s. Perhaps with the comment about Vinnie Moore's clear affects aside, the band definitely stays true to their '70s hard rock roots. Normally, this should be a good thing; I usually leave my radio dial set to classic rock stations, so it should be right up my alley. On the other hand, most of the songs still sound second-rate and dated. Sure, maybe that's unfair -- the songs probably sound second-rate as a result of the number of other bands that have aped them over the last four decades. And to be fair, there are some pretty grooving tunes here, like "Heavenly Body" from 2006's The Monkey Puzzle or "Saving Me" from 2009's The Visitor.

But...mostly the songs just didn't do anything for me. Occasionally a good riff, some good solos courtesy two fantastic guitarists, and enough to make me wonder about checking out some of their earlier work, but nothing to recommend on this one. If you're a UFO completist, you'll probably want this just to have it, but otherwise I would skip it.